GPS Shoes Navigate You Home

In “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy had to click
her heels three times to get home to Kansas. Now an English shoemaker
is making those three clicks a reality.Dominic Wilcox, from London, has invented a pair of shoes that can help you navigate anywhere you want to go. All it takes are three simple clicks.

The shoes are called “No Place Like Home” after Dorothy’s famous line
from the movie. The heel of the left shoe is hollowed out to hold a GPS
unit. A small antenna, covered in red fabric on the back of the shoe
reads signals from GPS satellites. To start the GPS, you just click your
heels three times. A magnet in the right shoe and a sensor in the left
detect when you’ve done it. The GPS is powered by a small battery
similar to that in a cellphone.

There is a computer program
that allows you to plot your destination on a map, which you upload to
the shoes via USB cable. The left shoe has a circle of LED lights on the
toe that light up to show you the direction you need to go. The right
shoe has a line of LEDs that act as a progress bar, telling you how
close you are to your destination. The shoes communicate via wireless.

Wilcox was commissioned by the Global Footprint project to design a pair of shoes. He was allowed to make any shoe he wanted.

“I thought about the ‘Wizard of Oz’ and Dorothy and how she clicks her
heels three times to get home,” Wilcox told ABC News. “I thought, ‘Is it
possible to make that real in some way using the technology that we
have?’”

Wilcox said he doesn’t have any plans for the shoes
yet, calling them a “work in progress.” He originally made one pair just
for the exhibition at the London Design Festival, but because of all
the attention they’ve been getting, he may try to make more, he said.
Either way, Wilcox is taking extra care to protect his creation and
trying not to use the shoes, although he said they do work.

Wilcox is now a designer based out of London and he creates a variety of
objects, sketches and installations. Recently, he designed several
watches that had small sculptures balancing on their hands.